A commercial laundry system may have many laundry machines of various types, such as washers, extractors, dryers, and tumblers, etc. At any given time, the machines may be in different states of their operation cycles, and have various levels of usage. Monitoring the operations of the machines and auditing the usage and revenue collection of the machines can be an extremely time consuming and laborious task if it is to be performed by persons, and it is difficult to ensure that the information collected is sufficiently current. Moreover, the laundry machines may from time to time have to be reprogrammed with different operation parameters. Entering the parameters into each machine manually can be a very time consuming task that is prone to errors.
Computerized networking effectively solves these problems and enables a large number of laundry machines to be constantly monitored and audited, and reprogrammed when necessary, with minimal intervention from an operator. In one existing framework for networked commercial laundry systems, a plurality of laundry machines are connected together via a simple wired network, such as a RS-485 network. A host computer is also connected to the network of laundry machines to collect status and audit information from the laundry machines and to program the machines with selected operation parameters. To that end, each laundry machine has a microprocessor-based machine control circuit that is programmed to receive and transmit data packets through the network and to process commands received from the host computer. To communicate with the laundry machines over the network, the host computer, which may be a personal computer (“PC”), is equipped with a network interface card that handles the network communications over the network that connects the laundry machines together.
One problem with this existing framework for laundry systems is that the host computer has to be located in close proximity of the laundry machines, since it has to be connected to the wired network of the laundry machines. This often requires putting the host computer at the site of the laundry machines. This presents various potential problems, such as tampering, theft, and vandalism of the host computer. The restricted location of the host computer may also make it more difficult to retrieve data collected by the host computer and to service the computer in the field.